A Genre Approach to the Translation of Political Speeches Based on a Chinese-Italian-English Trilingual Parallel Corpus

Yu Danni

doi:10.1177/2158244020933607

Abstract

Using a trilingual parallel corpus, this article investigates the translation of Chinese political speeches in Italian and English, with the aim to explore cross-linguistic variations regarding translation shifts of key functional elements in the genre of political speeches. The genre-based methodology includes a rhetorical move analysis, which is used to highlight key functional elements of the genre, and a functional grammar analysis of translation shifts of the lexico-grammatical elements identified in the previous stage. The findings show that the core communicative function of the genre is “Proposing deontic statements,” and modality of obligation is essential for the realization of this rhetorical function. Afterwards, the analysis of translation shifts of deontic modality reveals that the English translation is characterized by higher modality value shifts in comparison to the Italian translation. This difference may be related to the degree of autonomy in translation choice and understanding of the communicative purposes of the translation genre. In terms of methodological implications, this functionalist approach attempts to providing insights into the communicative purposes of the translation genre by focusing on how key functional elements are translated.

Highlights

In the context of globalization, political translation has been the subject of increasing interest in recent years
The present study explores the functional aspects of Chinese political translation from a genre-based perspective, using a trilingual parallel corpus in Chinese, Italian, and English
The present study investigates and compares the Italian and English translations of the political speeches published in the book XCG, with an aim to shed light on how different target languages engage translation strategies, which can be related to the decision-making process of translators in specific sociocultural context

Summary

Introduction

In the context of globalization, political translation has been the subject of increasing interest in recent years. In the Chinese context, the translation of political discourse is considered as an important form of “translation for international public relations” (Lv & Zhou, 2014), which is expected to help the international society understand better strategies and policies adopted by the Chinese government in the fields of politics, economics, diplomacy, culture, and so on The present study explores the functional aspects of Chinese political translation from a genre-based perspective, using a trilingual parallel corpus in Chinese, Italian, and English. The materials under investigation are the original Chinese texts of the book Xi Jinping: The Governance of China (hereafter XGC) (习近平谈治国理政) (Xi, 2014a), its Italian translation (Xi Jinping: Governare la Cina) (Xi, 2016), and its English translation (Xi, 2014b). The book consists of a series of political speeches made by the Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping at various occasions

Results

Discussion

Conclusion